HTML Forum

I'm trying to come up with a search-engine friendly layout for a writing instructor's site which will be heavy on text, making generous use of author quotes. The quotes obviously can't be changed, although the client's text could be modified slightly or have H-tagged or bolded "headlines" inserted, with approval.

The text files have been sent with selected quotes at the top of the pages, but that won't work - there are no keywords in them. Is there a feasible alternative layout to use so the quotes won't be at the page-top, without having to turn them all into graphics, which could negatively affect load time?

There are very long articles, an interview with a popular author (getting its own subdirectory), and numerous long writing tutorials, which could be spread to second and third pages if necessary.

There are no graphics, except what I choose to go with the design, and while "cartoonish" theme type graphics come to mind, they won't work because we're dealing with college-level writing seminars and corporate training. Still, it would be nice to insert some graphical elements here and there to break the long stretches of text.

There will possibly be online workshops and message boards eventually, but there's another domain name tucked away for that. Still, I'd like to get this one ready just in case it would need to integrate with a "community" site with some degree of continuity in the design.

I seem to be drawing a creative blank with picking a layout, and wonder if some sort of multi-columnar arrangement would work, maybe with a bit of a graphical touch thrown in here and there. Any suggestions?

Yep, pick your quotes for their keyword value. Those that you have to lead with, make them short. Using a template with a left side menu tends to help those sites. The se's can figure out where the real content starts.

Put the quotes in a table, within a table, and maybe even yet another table (bury them three deep). Then put your content only one table deep. The further you can bury the quotes inside of tables, the less the search engines will consider them in relation to the rest of the page.